NOT AVAILABLE

THE RESIDENTS subscribed to this "theory of obscurity" idea which meant no interviews, no pictures, they didn't reveal who they were personally, and they even created this album with the view of not releasing it until they had forgotten about it. So in the liner notes it states that this record was recorded in 1974, after their debut then, and album number two. But they put it in the vaults, called it "Not Available", and it wasn't brought out until 1978, and it's officially studio album number four.

Many feel like it sounds like their later albums, but that's not the experience I had with this one. In fact without knowing about all this "theory of obscurity" stuff, I felt like this album "sounded" like their debut. I literally felt that because the character voices on here, that will pop up on other albums, they just aren't that funny or well done. It's like they were finding their sound here, but they didn't actually find it on "Not Available". Not nearly as funny, and the music isn't nearly as good. On the other hand, it took four spins of this for it to finally click with me. It was so surprising when this happened!

So on the one hand this feels like a step down from their other early stuff, but on the other hand this just clicked with me which means I really am into this now. Weird! The other thing about this album is that it's supposed to be a concept album of some sort. I don't think anyone really knows what the concept itself is though. So this is different yet familiar. It's not "Mark Of The Mole" different, in that they have gone into new territories. Lots of percussion, piano and electronics, but the vocals dominate and are hit and miss. This is the highest rated THE RESIDENTS album on RYM.